Dorr Township is a civil township of Allegan County in the southwest of the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 7,922 at the 2020 census.
History
This area was long the territory of Algonquian-language tribes, specifically the Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi.
The first permanent European-American settlers in the township arrived in 1845. The first settler in the community of Dorr came in 1856, and arranged for the town to be platted in 1869. It received a United States post office in 1870.
Communities
Dorr is an unincorporated community and census-designated place at , near the center of the township, west of U.S. Highway 131 exit 68. The ZIP code is 49323. It is in the northeast part of Allegan County, 7 miles (11 km) northwest of Wayland and 19 miles (31 km) south-southwest of Grand Rapids.
First known as "Dorr Centre", the community is believed to have been named for Thomas Wilson Dorr, a state legislator and leader of the Dorr Rebellion in Rhode Island that sought a broader franchise of universal male suffrage in the 1840s.
It has four elementary schools, including two public: Sycamore Elementary, which is part of the Hopkins school district, and Dorr Elementary, which is part of Wayland Union Schools. The two private schools are Saint Stanislaus Catholic School near Hilliards, and Moline Christian School.
Moline is an unincorporated community at just east of U.S. Highway 131. The ZIP code is 49335. The community lies mostly within Dorr Township but is on the eastern boundary. Some development extends into neighboring Leighton Township. Moline was first settled by European Americans in 1840. Development was stimulated when the Grand Rapids and Indiana Railway came through in 1870 and established a station here. It was platted in 1872 by Alfred Chapple. It began about 1865 and had its own post office from 1874 to 1905.